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It is always a pleasure to
find books that communicate their messages easily, quickly and with charm – in
both words and illustrations. Of course, those messages must be
simple-to-understand ones for young readers, but “simple” is not the same as
“simplistic,” and the themes of well-done books for ages 3-8 (more or less)
retain their importance for children in later years. Stick and Stone, for example, is simply about friendship and how
friends help each other, but it is also about helping people who may not be
friends – but could perhaps become friends someday. Stick and Stone are just
that, a stick and a stone, with dots for eyes and simply drawn mouths – yet Tom
Lichtenheld manages to make them attractive and to give them personality even
though you might think he has little to work with in Beth Ferry’s story. Ferry
starts the book when Stick and Stone are on their own (yes, the story rhymes,
although that specific rhyme is not in it). They are both lonely, looking like
a zero and a one; but then they meet and play together, even though Pinecone
makes fun of Stone – that is, until Stick tells Pinecone to stop, and Pinecone
stomps off. Stick and Stone develop a growing friendship after Stick helps
Stone – and then, after a windstorm that blows both Stick and Pinecone away
(leaving Stone behind), Stone is alone again…but this time determined to find
Stick. He rolls along until he eventually does – Stick is stuck upside-down in
a puddle – and by leaping into the water and making a great splash, Stone
rescues Stick, returning the favor that Stick did for him, and even earning an
apology from Pinecone at the end. In a neat touch, the two friends who looked
like a zero and one are shown standing together, “a perfect 10.” And the
message about friendship rings true quite clearly.

The message in Dev Petty’s I Don’t Want to Be a Frog is that
sometimes you just have to be what you are, even if you don’t want to – and
there may be hidden advantages of which you are not yet aware. Young Frog wants
to be just about any animal except a
frog, repeatedly telling his father what he prefers to be instead. He first
chooses a cat, but his dad points out that he can’t be a cat, because he’s a
frog. So he decides to be a rabbit – after all, he can hop – but his father
says he doesn’t have long ears, and besides, he’s a frog. Still, the young frog
keeps complaining: being a frog is too wet, too slimy, and involves too much bug
eating. No, he cannot be a pig or an owl, either, he is told. But then, who
should show up but the neighborhood wolf – who hears the animals that Frog
wants to be and comments that he loves eating all of them and “might just go
gobble some up right now.” But, he says, there is one thing he never eats:
frogs – because they are too wet, too slimy and too full of bugs. So it turns
out that there are some very definitely good things about being a frog after
all. Mike Boldt’s broadly conceived and highly amusing illustrations (including
one of a lunch bag labeled as being packed with “2 dozen premium quality
organic badgers”) neatly complement Petty’s text, and again there is a clear
message here: you might as well figure out what’s good about being yourself, because
“yourself” is what you are going to be.

Frogs are among the many
animals that lay eggs, and they are therefore among the many included in a
nonfiction, somewhat more complex book that is nevertheless brief and to the
point. This is Egg: Nature’s Perfect
Package, by Robin Page and Steve Jenkins. Kids who only know about eggs
from the market and refrigerator will be fascinated to learn that almost every
animal begins life as an egg – humans included. They will see well-conceived,
well-drawn illustrations of little and big eggs, learning that “sometimes big
animals lay big eggs, but not always. The egg of the kiwi, a bird smaller than
a chicken, is thousands of times larger than the egg of a giant squid.” They
will find out some of the fascinating places where animals lay their eggs:
inside an acorn (the acorn weevil), on shore at high tide (fish called
grunion), on a leaf overhanging the water (another fish, the splash tetra), and
on a bare tree branch (the white tern, which lives where there are no
egg-eating animals). The book explains about animals that lay very few eggs and
ones that lay many (the fish tapeworm may lay seven billion of them in its
lifetime). Page and Jenkins look at some egg eaters, and the strategies they
use to get the nutrients out of the shell. And they discuss protective
strategies against those egg eaters, from some amazing forms of camouflage to
close monitoring of the eggs by one parent or both. Even adults will likely be
amazed at some of the information here: warmer eggs in an alligator nest
produce males, while cooler ones produce females; a mother platypus (one of two
egg-laying mammals) keeps her eggs warm by “clutching them between her body and
her tail”; the kiwi has to kick its way out of its shell, which is particularly
thick; the eggs of brine shrimp can remain dormant for 50 years, then hatch
when water temperature and salinity are just right. The book ends by portraying
actual in-egg developmental stages, shown life-size, of a chicken and an
alligator, and giving more-detailed information on 54 animals shown in the book
as a kind of appendix. Egg: Nature’s
Perfect Package conveys not only science but also a sense of wonder – kids
who read it (and their parents) may never look at the mundane packaged-by-the-dozen
chicken egg in quite the same way again.

Glamourpuss. By Sarah Weeks.
Pictures by David Small. Scholastic. $16.99.

What makes Mary Lundquist’s Cat & Bunny so special is not so
much the story, which is a simple one about friendship, but the way Lundquist
chooses to illustrate her theme. Cat and Bunny are really children wearing
animal costumes – no reason for this is given, and none is necessary. They live
amid other children who also wear animal costumes, and each of those other
children is also called by the name of the animal he or she is meant to look
like: Quail, Giraffe and so on. Lundquist carries this theme not only through
the book’s narrative pages but also onto the inside front and back covers,
which show absolutely delightful pictures of kids dressed as, for example, a
bee and a dragon. And the very opening of the book, the two-page spread that
includes the title page, is warmhearted almost beyond words, showing the
various animal-clad kids as newborns, all of them swaddled and sleeping
peacefully, except that Cat and Bunny are wide-eyed and awake. So maybe they aren’t just in costumes after all? Well,
whatever Lundquist intends with these lovely watercolor illustrations, the
effect is magical, making the otherwise rather mundane story very wonderful
indeed. The tale involves the close friendship of Cat and Bunny and the way it
is threatened, or seems to be threatened, when another child asks to play with
them in their favorite game, “the Made-Up Game.” Lundquist explains that “they
played it every day and only they knew the rules to it,” so when Bunny allows
Quail to join in, this seems like a betrayal to Cat, and when still more kids
start playing, Cat is so upset that she runs away – and Bunny does not even
notice. Then Cat finds a kitten, a real one, and the kitten becomes a new
friend, and Cat creates a new Made-Up Game – and then Giraffe asks to join in.
Cat has to think about it, but does decide to say yes – and soon other kids are
playing this game with Cat and the kitten, and then Bunny comes over and asks
to play, and the two friends are back together with a lot of other friends as well. The message about friendship is
soft-pedaled and sweet, but it is the utterly charming illustrations that turn Cat & Bunny into a book to cherish.

The bunnies – four of them –
are quite different in Kevan Atteberry’s very funny and minimally wordy Bunnies!!! These bunnies are plump,
big-nosed, and brightly colored in shades never seen in nature: orange, pink,
blue and green. In fact, they look more like stuffed toys than real bunnies –
and so does the monster stalking them. But he is not stalking for any nefarious
purpose. Yes, he has horns and a huge head that, with no neck, merges into his
stocky body; and he has a big mouth stuffed with teeth; but his tail ends in a
purple puff, and all he wants to do is walk along saying hello to things.
“Hello, tree. Hello, clouds. Hello, butterfly.” And so on. When he sees the
bunnies, however, his exclamation of delight fills two pages and his mouth
opens so wide that it is almost half the size of his whole body. “Bunnies!!
Bunnies!! Bunnies!!” he shouts, chasing the four of them as they, obviously
thinking the worst, flee into the woods. The dejected monster searches for them
but cannot find them anywhere (they are hiding behind trees). Finally,
downcast, he says, “Noooo bunnies,” and goes on his way, still saying hello to
things but no longer with the same happy expression he had before. Then he
spots the bunnies again, and the whole chase-and-hide scene is repeated, except
that the monster is even unhappier when they disappear this time – the
butterfly that lands on one of his horns does not cheer him up at all. The
bunnies now approach silently, tap him gently, and after another huge
“Bunnies!!!” exclamation, everyone dances and leaps and laughs and has a
wonderful time. The end – well, almost…because on the very last page, the
monster spots “Birdies!” And the whole scenario is obviously set to play itself
out again. Atteberry has a wonderful sense of storytelling absurdity that uses
very few words, and his silly drawings are so expressively amusing that the
tale barely needs any narrative at all.

So now that we have seen Cat & Bunny and Bunnies!!! it seems only appropriate to have a cat-focused book.
Enter Glamourpuss. There is much more
narrative here than in the other books – but the message, about the importance
of friendship, is exactly the same. Glamourpuss lives with “gazillionaires” called
Mr. and Mrs. Highhorsen, and is waited on hand and paw by servants named Gustav
and Rosalie. The humans’ faces are never shown, since the whole focus of the
book is Glamourpuss, whose only job is to be glamorous, “and she was very good
at it.” In fact, she is so glamorous
that “instead of saying me-ow like an ordinary cat, she shortened it to just
ME!” Everything is just perfect for Glamourpuss until, one day, Mr.
Highhorsen’s sister shows up from Texas and brings along – Bluebelle. She is,
of all things, a dog, a Chihuahua who
comes with “tacky wardrobe and wagging tail” and a distinctly unhappy
expression. Glamourpuss’ own expression quickly becomes even unhappier than
Bluebelle’s, because the dog “did tricks”
and is unaccountably charming to the Highhorsens as she stands on a ball, does
flips, wears a fruit hat in Carmen Miranda fashion, even parades through the
house dressed as a Southern belle (complete with parasol). Glamourpuss becomes
so jealous that she even tries on one of Bluebelle’s outfits, but things just
get worse and worse as Bluebelle hogs all the attention. Soon Glamourpuss is
immersed in her very own “pity party.” But then, one day, Bluebelle tears up
all her cute little outfits and makes a gigantic mess of the guest room and gets
loudly scolded by Eugenia; and Glamourpuss is set to be the center of
everyone’s focus again. Except that she spots Bluebelle practicing being
glamorous – and realizes that Bluebelle hated all her forced performances and
never really wanted anything but to be like Glamourpuss! So the cat takes the
dog under her wing (or paw), and soon there are two haughty, stuck-up, ultra-dignified animals in the house – with
Bluebelle even “shortening ‘bow-wow’ to the much more glamorous WOW!” Eugenia
is not entirely happy with all this, but the Highhorsens are proud of
Glamourpuss, and cat and dog end up best friends – very glamorous ones indeed.
Sarah Weeks’ amusingly overdone story is perfectly reflected in David Small’s
illustrations, which combine ink and watercolor with pastels and even some
collages (the use of a famous picture of Theda Bara as Cleopatra in a scene
where the Highhorsens are watching TV is an especially funny touch, at least
for film buffs). Immersing a story about unlikely friends in the midst of a
tongue-in-cheek look at how the ultra-rich might live, Weeks and Small produce
a winning and offbeat story with some touches of surprising subtlety – such as
one page on which costumed Bluebelle grimaces toward lounging Glamourpuss as
the three super-rich humans toast the dog’s performance using three different
drinks, each person holding a glass while elegantly extending his or her pinky.
“WOW!” indeed.

Arwen Elys Dayton’s Seeker, the start of a trilogy, is an
unusual book cast in a very usual form. On the surface it is yet another
coming-of-age fantasy with dystopian overtones (and an occasional, rather
pointless reference to science, as if that turns it into science fiction). Also
on the surface, it is a story of friends and friendship, of family squabbles
and outright war (both between families and within them), and of the usual
dread discoveries that people, things and life itself are not what the
protagonists were led to believe before they all went through life-changing
circumstances. What is different here is not so much the framework, not so much
the story arc, as the characters. Dayton actually does manage to humanize the
protagonists and keep readers interested as the tale veers from the perspective
of one to that of the next and the one after that. It is certainly true that
the episodes told from various characters’ viewpoints do not have particularly
distinctive styles – in that sense, the characters are types and their language
is always the same, rather than suited to each one’s individual personality.
However, in an adventure novel for ages 14 and up, this is actually something
of a strength, allowing focus on the action and the characters’ interactions
rather than requiring readers to delve too deeply into motivations and
personalities. The basic notion here is the typical one of a coming-of-age
trial that turns out not to be what everyone expects: Quin Kincaid, nominal
central character but more like the first among equals, is expected at age 15
to become a Seeker, a role she has been told is an honorable one that involves
protecting people through special training and the use of a weapon called an
“athame” (three syllables: ATH-uh-may). Quin has been training for her Seeker
life with close friends Shinobu, who is also 15, and John, who at 16 should be
too old to become a Seeker but who came to the training late, through
mysterious circumstances that have allowed him to complete it. Or almost complete it: Quin’s father, who
is in charge and is an especially unpleasant character even when compared with
typical authority figures in genre books like this one, deliberately dangles
the Seeker possibility before John so he can snatch it away at the last minute.
This leads to a cascading confusion of events that soon reveals deep-seated,
multigenerational animosity and what is essentially war among various powerful
families, with John’s – which, interestingly, has its stronghold in an airship,
a rarity in fantasies of this type – having suffered severe victimization that
John may, just may, be able to do something to reverse.

A typical sort of love story
also burbles along here, with Quin and John the usual star-crossed lovers from
opposing families whose animosity is right in line with that of the Montagues
and Capulets. But Dayton makes the Romeo-and-Juliet theme, along with several
others, less conventional than usual in books of this sort, setting the
characters themselves – not just their parents – against each other, and
introducing complicating factors of all kinds and in all places (different
parts of the book take place in different locales, although as with the
characters themselves, the geographical places are not described in any
particularly differentiating detail). At the foundation of the book is a set of
three laws, whose resemblance to Isaac Asimov’s justly famed Three Laws of
Robotics is likely deliberate: “First law: a Seeker is forbidden to take
another family’s athame. Second law: a Seeker is forbidden to kill another
Seeker save in self-defense. Third law: a Seeker is forbidden to harm
humankind.” Indeed, the third of these is almost identical to Asimov’s “zeroth”
law, introduced long after the first three; and this third law in Seeker lies at the heart of everything
that occurs. Seeker lurches a bit in
its narrative, and Dayton seems aware that her broad-brush opening section,
while certainly exciting, leaves a few too many questions unanswered, because
she next offers a section of background that explains the history of some of
the characters more clearly. One such character, whose 15-year-old body belies
her extension through time, is not a Seeker but something called a Dread, and
as this character, Maud, becomes increasingly intertwined with others, Seeker takes on greater depth and
strangeness. Because this is the
first book of a trilogy, one of its primary requirements is to start the story
with a tight focus and eventually widen the canvas so that there is much more
to be revealed in succeeding books. Dayton handles this aspect of the novel
quite well indeed, creating a satisfying teen-adventure fantasy here while also
raising enough questions of the “what does it all mean?” variety so that
readers will look forward to the second book, Traveler, due out next year. Ultimately, what sets Seeker above many other books in its
genre is the skill with which Dayton keeps the narrative moving, refocuses its
perspective, widens and broadens the story, and implies that, however serious
and mysterious things may be, there are matters of even greater consequence
still to be revealed. The story arc and actual writing style are not
particularly distinguished, but the book’s pacing, skillful use of multiple
viewpoints, and ability to interweave unexpected implications with what seem at
first to be straightforward action scenes, are elements that set it apart.

Much more conventional and
heart-on-its-sleeve romantic, Cathleen Davitt Bell’s I Remember You targets the same age group with a story that also
includes fantasy elements masquerading as science fiction (here, a sort of
time-travel-cum-telepathy) but that sticks in all its essentials to the
longstanding trope of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy regains girl (or the
other way around). There is nothing profound here at all, but there are many
attempts, some of them successful, to tug readers’ heartstrings. It is tempting
to call this too a Romeo-and-Juliet story, especially since the female
protagonist is actually named Juliet, but in fact her romance with Lucas is
approached from a somewhat different angle. True, the two of them come from
different worlds – he is a star athlete, she a straight-A student; he plans to
enlist in the Marines after high school, while she is certainly going to
college. But the drama here comes not from these differences but from the fact
that Lucas seems to remember things that have not happened yet – including
falling in love with Juliet and eventually dying in war. This whole setup is
pretty silly, and has been done many times before: future self may have
returned in some way to relive the past, and can the future be changed with
foreknowledge? However, Bell plays the whole scenario straight and as if it is
new. Lucas and Juliet interact, express uncertainty, struggle to understand
what is going on and if anything is
going on, and so forth. Lucas’ flash-forwards – or memories, if that is what
they are – come more often and grow increasingly ominous, and eventually Juliet
decides that the memories are real, that Lucas will indeed die after joining
the Marines and being sent to war, and that there must be some way to use the
advance knowledge to prevent his death from happening. In real science fiction,
paradoxes of this sort have long been explored from many angles, often with
considerable thoughtfulness, but in I
Remember You the whole “future memory” notion is simply a plot device
within a teen-romance book. Eventually the young lovers break up, Lucas
does join the Marines despite his apparent memories and Juliet’s deep-seated
misgivings, he does get sent to war, and certain other “remembered” events
begin to happen just as anticipated. By this time, teenage romance readers will
be rooting desperately for there to be some
way, somehow, for everything to work out – and it does not spoil anything to
say that Bell, bending over backwards to deliver a happy ending, finds one. It
may not be believable, but little in this (+++) book is – and believability is
not the novel’s reason for being. This is a tissue-and-handkerchief book, one
intended to mirror the deep yearnings teenagers so often feel during first love
while providing a setting just sufficiently outlandish to yank those feelings
here and there before offering a last-minute sigh of relief. Thoroughly
predictable, efficient in its delivery of the chills and romance that its
readers will seek, I Remember You is
really not memorable at all, nor is it really meant to be: it is romance, with
a fillip of time-travel fantasy, offered purely as entertainment.

With all the health-focused
food books out there, you would think that by now authors and editors would
know the difference between “healthy” and “healthful.” No such luck. A
“healthy” recipe would be one that is robust, pink-cheeked and probably lifts
weights when not doing cardio. Being “healthy” is an attribute of the thing
itself. Something that is “healthful” is good for someone or something else. In
other words, if you stop eating bacon-wrapped deep-fried pork lard and instead
have some kale and quinoa, you are eating a more-healthful dish – because it is
better for you. It is not healthier. It is more healthful.

And now that we have gotten
past the “healthy recipes” error in the subtitle of The Gluten-Free Vegetarian Family Cookbook, we can consider how
many other standard elements of food can be left out until everyone is
essentially grazing on naturally grown grass. Well, no one is quite calling for
that, yet, but it is certainly true that advocates of removing certain
traditional elements of many people’s diets are now saying that even more such
elements ought to disappear. Gluten-free is not enough, argues Susan O’Brien,
author of several previous books about gluten-free eating. Gluten-free plus vegetarian is the way to go.

Leaving out the
sociopolitical elements of this sort of dietary recommendation, readers should
be very careful about adopting a gluten-free eating regimen unless they have
been diagnosed with celiac disease. There is strong medical and scientific
evidence that gluten-free diets are often lacking in vitamins, minerals and
fiber. Reports on the risks of gluten-free eating from sources as diverse as Scientific American, WebMD, the
University of Wisconsin-Madison, and even Fitness
magazine will not convince people who believe there is some vast conspiracy to
force people to consume and be consumed by the evils of gluten. But those with
a smidgen of objectivity should look into those reports seriously: unlike
authors of books about the gluten-free life, the scientists studying dietary
habits have no particular axes to grind and no additional personal profit to be
made by taking a pro-gluten or anti-gluten position.

Assuming, though, that a
reader has celiac disease and therefore should
look into a gluten-free diet, O’Brien’s book provides some interesting options
for going gluten-free because you must
– and vegetarian because you want to.
As a guide to preparing food meeting both gluten-free and vegetarian criteria,
the book is fine. O’Brien provides the usual list of foods to have always on
hand: sorghum flour, chia seeds, arrowroot, grapeseed oil, Earth Balance
non-GMO spread, mung beans, seaweed, guar gum, kelp flakes and many more
ingredients that will be unfamiliar to the vast majority of cooks but sensible
for those at whom this book is targeted. The book’s readers will also
presumably not be thrown by the large ingredient list for foods that most
people would regard as simple. “Best Sunrise Breakfast Muffins,” for example,
require 18 ingredients, including coconut milk (“not canned”), coconut palm
sugar and almond meal or flour. “Raw Avocado and Corn Soup with Cilantro Pesto”
has 20 ingredients, among them chopped raw cashews, maple syrup and chopped
serrano pepper. This book is best for people who are not only determined to eat
foods of the type O’Brien describes but also have plenty of time available to
prepare them – and, indeed, enjoy spending time in the kitchen (although she
does label some recipes “quick & easy”). There are recipes here for
breakfasts, salads, main dishes, side dishes, desserts, and even snacks, with
interesting and often appealing or intriguing names such as “Mochi Waffles,”
“Jicama and Fruit Slaw,” “Tempeh and Veggie Bourgignon,” “Tandoori-Style Tofu
with Sesame Tahini Sauce,” “Sauerkraut Stir-Fry with Kelp Noodles,” “Sesame
Tahini and Lime Dressing,” and “Delicious Protein-Packed
Strawberry-Blueberry-Tofu Smoothie.” O’Brien has certainly managed to assemble
an extensive list of foods that have both gluten-free and vegetarian
characteristics, and she couples the recipes with some useful information – for
example, “Wine and hard liquor are…gluten-free, although there are many people
who believe otherwise.” For people with an interest in gluten-free food that
also fits vegetarian diets, The Gluten-Free
Vegetarian Family Cookbook is certainly a useful guide. But the fact remains
that gluten-free eating has become a fad rather than a matter of health and
wellness, and there are dangers to switching to a gluten-free diet just because
“it seems more healthful” (not “healthier”!) rather than because of a medical
diagnosis that makes it necessary. O’Brien does not address this issue – her
book is one of advocacy rather than considered balance – so readers should
seriously think about it on their own before making significant changes in what
they eat.

At the Hoffnung
Interplanetary Music Festival back in 1958, one piece of musical humor offered
for the delectation and delight of the audience was called Concerto for Conductor and Orchestra by Francis Chagrin. The point
was that conductors have many ways, some subtle and some not so subtle, to take
control of music and musicians – a fact that orchestral musicians know well, of
course, but that is not always apparent to audience members at concerts, since
the majority of a conductor’s work is done at rehearsals, not during
performances themselves. One would expect the conductor’s input into the music
to be even less clear in recordings, but in some of them, his or her influence
is quite evident to listeners who pay careful attention. Although there is a
certain blandness to many interpretations nowadays, abetted by the increasing similarity
of the sound of many orchestras, there are some conductors who unfailingly put
their stamp on the works they lead. Valery Gergiev is one of them. In addition
to an exuberant podium manner, he has an unhesitating willingness to shape
music for emotional ends even at the expense of literalness – resembling, in
both these ways, Leonard Bernstein. But Gergiev is less prone to excess than
Bernstein was, and many of his performances succeed in conveying a great deal
of emotional impact while also elucidating the structure of the works. Gergiev
manages to get this effect not only from his own Mariinsky Orchestra but also
from those that he guest conducts, as is apparent in two new releases. The
Mussorgsky disc on the Mariinsky’s own label is wonderful from start to finish.
The Gergiev touch – which often means strong emphasis on percussion and sforzandos that are genuinely startling
– serves Ravel’s orchestration of Pictures
at an Exhibition exceptionally well. Anyone who knows Gergiev would expect The Hut on Fowl’s Legs and The Great Gate of Kiev to be splendid,
and indeed they are; but Gergiev also shows subtlety in his attention to detail
in some of the smaller and less overtly splendor-filled sections. In Tuileries and Ballet of the Chicks in Their Shells, for example, he varies the
tempo considerably, drawing out some phrases and compressing others to shape
the impact he is looking for. His slight extra pause at the end of the “chicks”
movement gives the whole thing a wonderfully whimsical feel. But Gergiev is
also quite capable of delving deeply into dark feelings, as in Songs and Dances of Death, which Italian
bass Ferruccio Furlanetto sings with sensitivity and involvement – although his
voice is not as deeply resonant as that of some of the best Russian basses. In
these four lugubrious but highly varied looks at different aspects of death,
heard here in the 1962 orchestration by Shostakovich, Gergiev both follows
Furlanetto’s lead and expands and enhances the words with an orchestral
accompaniment that is fully participatory in the material. It is regrettable
that the words themselves are not provided with the recording – they are
absolutely necessary for an understanding of the music, and their omission is
unconscionable. The CD concludes with Mussorgsky’s own orchestration of Night on Bare Mountain, not the far more
commonly heard version by Rimsky-Korsakov. That one is better balanced and more
satisfying as a tone poem, with a definite beginning, middle and end;
Mussorgsky’s original, though, is wilder and altogether stranger, its segments
spilling over one another and its conclusion inconclusive in a way that
Rimsky-Korsakov’s beautiful “coming of dawn” ending is not. Gergiev skillfully
contrasts the faster, more-pointed segments of Mussorgsky’s version with the
slower ones, which are eerie rather than reassuring. The Rimsky-Korsakov
orchestration is so familiar and in its own way so successful that listeners
may have a hard time adjusting to the vagaries of the composer’s own approach,
but Gergiev makes as good a case for it as one is likely to hear.

The London Symphony
Orchestra may not be as instantaneously responsive to Gergiev as the Mariinsky
Orchestra, but the LSO Live release of two Berlioz works nevertheless bears the
conductor’s strong imprint. Harold in
Italy is episodic and requires, for its full effect, some knowledge of its
poetic source, much as is the case with Tchaikovsky’s Manfred, which is also based on a work by Byron. Gergiev does not
try to minimize the somewhat disconnected score, preferring to treat each
movement essentially as a separate tone poem. This works quite well: the finely
nuanced playing of Antoine Tamestit helps keep things together as the orchestra
produces sounds ranging from the pastoral and almost folk-like to the highly
dramatic – to call Gergiev’s handling of the very ending of this work
“emphatic” is greatly to understate the case. Harold in Italy is nicely complemented by La mort de Cléopâtre, which Karen
Cargill has made something of a specialty: she also recently recorded it with
the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Robin Ticciati. In that version,
mezzo-soprano and conductor focused on the work’s lyricism; with Gergiev, the
focus is on the dramatic intensity of the story. Both approaches work quite
well – there are enough emotions in this Berlioz piece to accommodate varying ways
of handling it – but there is no doubt that the work’s conclusion under
Gergiev, as the composer offers a tone-painting of the fatal bite of the asp
and Cleopatra’s final gasping words, is nearly operatic in its impact. Again,
though, where are the words? They are
not included with the CD (they were with the Ticciati version); and the fact
that listeners can find them online does not excuse the producers of the
recording from providing such basic material.

The conductor’s influence
can be strongly felt even in some recordings that are true collaborations, such
as the new release of Beethoven’s piano concertos on the Berlin Classics label.
Here the conductor and soloist are husband and wife, which renders the whole
issue of who influences whom and what particularly interesting. The reality is
that the collaboration of Mari Kodama and Kent Nagano is a highly successful one
in most of this repertoire, with some passages sounding amazingly intuitive in
their mutuality: the coda of the finale of Concerto No. 4 is an especially
striking example. This three-CD set is actually a compilation of performances
recorded over the better part of a decade: the readings of the first three
concertos date to 2006, that of the Triple
Concerto to 2010, and those of Concertos Nos. 4 and 5 to 2013. Actually,
those most-recent performances are the best of the bunch: Kodama plays with
power, assurance and a strong sense of the concertos’ structure, and Nagano
leads the excellent Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin at a fine pace with
excellent attention to detail. The recordings of Concertos Nos. 1 and 2 are a
bit more tentative and include a few unnecessary instances of rubato or what sounds like outright
hesitation. No. 3 is fine, but has a surface-level sheen that makes it sound as
if Kodama and Nagano have not quite plumbed its depths. Yet all this is really
nitpicking: these are excellently played performances throughout, with soloist
and conductor clearly in rapport with each other as well as with the music.
Beethoven did not write these concertos for the modern piano or a full-size
modern orchestra, so these versions must be deemed rather old-fashioned in
their use of today’s instruments and techniques. But they are certainly
effective. The second-movement “dialogue” of No. 4 is a high point, with the
drama and lyricism of orchestra and piano, respectively, brought into high
relief. And all of No. 5, the “Emperor,” is excellent: the work’s anticipation
of later Romantic-era concertos is especially clear in this reading. The sole
disappointment here is the Triple
Concerto, a work still so under-appreciated that it is not even mentioned
in the accompanying booklet – and is wrongly listed in three separate places as
being heard on the second CD after Concerto No. 3 (it is actually heard before
that work). Although Kolja Blacher and Johannes Moser play their stringed
instruments well, they sound somewhat timid in comparison with Kodama’s piano.
It can be argued that the piano is
preeminent in this concerto, but in fact the work benefits from roughly equal
prominence of the three soloists. There is nothing really wrong with this
performance, but it is rather wan and pallid, which this music certainly does
not have to be. The five solo concertos, on the other hand, are bright, almost
effervescent at times, as conductor and soloist alike approach them with
enthusiasm, understanding and what is clearly first-rate technique.

Sometimes a conductor can
make an imprint on an orchestra without necessarily making one on particular
pieces of music. That is the case with Alan Gilbert’s Nielsen cycle with the
New York Philharmonic. The orchestra itself has not sounded this good since the
Bernstein era: Gilbert clearly knows how to extract the maximum warmth,
precision and sectional balance from an orchestra that has often been rather
ragged and unruly under a variety of conductors – to the detriment of music and
audiences alike. However, Gilbert’s readings of Nielsen’s Fifth and Sixth
Symphonies, which complete his cycle for Dacapo, suffer from the same malaise
as his performances of the other symphonies. He tends to make the works too
bland, smoothing their sharp edges and generally taming their frequently outré
orchestrations, rhythms and harmonies (even Nielsen’s First, his
most-straightforward symphony, is harmonically odd, never deciding which of two
keys it is in). Thus, in the Fifth, where the timpani player is at one point
famously instructed to play ad libitum
and try to disrupt the rest of the orchestra, Gilbert keeps things under such
tight control that this aleatoric, highly provocative section becomes merely
noisy. That was not Nielsen’s idea at all. As for Symphony No. 6, which Nielsen
called “Sinfonia semplice” with tongue firmly in cheek, this is a genuinely
bizarre work, as strange in its way as much of Ives’ music was in its.
Deliberately crass, overdone, silly, mocking, sarcastic and at times just plain
weird, Nielsen’s Sixth invites a conductor to pull out all the stops and really
show what he or she can get an orchestra to do. Gilbert may be up to the
challenge, but if so, he chooses not to rise to it: this Nielsen Sixth is very
mild indeed, its jagged edges smoothed to such a degree that even the very end
(when the bassoons keep playing after everything is finished, as if the
conductor failed to cue them to stop) sounds intentional. It is intentional, of course: Nielsen knew
exactly what he was doing. But here as with the timpani in Symphony No. 5, what
the composer wanted was a kind of chaos within an overall atmosphere of control
– control that eventually asserts itself in the Fifth but that falls apart in
the Sixth. Ironically, Gilbert’s skill at controlling the New York Philharmonic
here stands in the way of delivering fully satisfying performances – although
this SACD still gets a (+++) rating in recognition of the very fine playing of
the ensemble and the excellent sound with which the disc is endowed.

Against the famed Germanic
composers of the Baroque era are arrayed a large number of equally prominent
Italians: Corelli, A. and D. Scarlatti, Pergolesi, Locatelli, Gabrieli,
Tartini, Galuppi, Sammartini, Geminiani – and of course Vivaldi. So influential
were Vivaldi’s works, so familiar are some of them today, that to many he
stands as the Baroque composer, with
only J.S. Bach at his level. Yet Vivaldi himself, far from encapsulating any
particular tradition, was constantly innovating both in his compositions and in
his own violin performances (which were controversial in their day: not
everyone liked or appreciated his style). One small matter of creativity among
many: L’Estro Armonico was the first
collection of concertos ever to appear in two volumes. These 12 concertos were
published in 1711 to great admiration, and along with Vivaldi’s Op. 8 (Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione,
the set that includes The Four Seasons)
are arguably the composer’s most important printed works. Yet it is only now
that they have been recorded using a critical edition that scrupulously returns
to and adheres to Vivaldi’s original intentions. Federico Guglielmo, an
outstanding solo violinist who also acts as concertmaster of the group he
founded in 1994, L’Arte dell’Arco, performs all the concertos attentively,
fervently and with an absolute command of Baroque style and ornamentation on a
new Brilliant Classics release. These performances give the lie to the notion
that all Vivaldi concertos are essentially the same: eight of these are in
three movements, four in four; six are in major keys, six in minor; there are
two in D and two in A minor, but the others are in eight different keys – A, E,
F and G major and B, D, E and G minor. Even the instrumental combinations
differ among these works: four feature a single solo violin, four call for two,
and four require four. Admittedly, the decidedly odd arrangement of the
concertos on this new recording makes it difficult to see how carefully Vivaldi
formulated and arranged the set of 12: the concertos are presented in the order
10, 1, 5, 7, 8, 4, 9, 2, 12, 6, 11 and 3, for no stated or readily discernible
reason. Still, with the exception of this unexplained oddity of presentation,
the performance here is wonderful from start to finish. This is essentially
chamber music, although it was not deemed so in its time: there are only 11
players here, including Guglielmo, and not all of them perform all the works.
So the music has always been intended to have a lightness, a transparency, a
clarity as great as it has in this recording. Individual movements are
invariably short, some less than a minute and none longer than
three-and-a-half, but each is a complete package in itself, and each fits
perfectly – in tempo, rhythm and key relationship – with the others within a
given concerto. No wonder so many consider Vivaldi to be the Italian Baroque composer. And no wonder Bach and others made so
many transcriptions and paid so many tributes to Vivaldi – there is perfection
of form here, as well as profound understanding of the musical capabilities of
the instruments for which these works were written.

It should be no surprise,
given Vivaldi’s importance, that Vivaldi transcriptions continue to be made
even in the 21st century. Mandolinist Avi Avital even includes one
from L’Estro Armonico on his new
Deutsche Grammophon CD: No. 6, in A minor. Hearing it as a mandolin concerto
shows clearly that Vivaldi, like Bach, wrote music that in a sense transcends
the instruments for which it was written – even though it lies so well on those
instruments. The sound of Avital’s transcription is certainly different from
that of the original solo-violin concerto, but the purity, elegance and poise
of the music come through just as clearly here as when Guglielmo plays the same
music. Vivaldi did write concertos specifically for mandolin, and the one heard
here – in C, RV 425 – in some ways is the highlight of the entire disc: Avital plays
it with flair as well as understanding, and the overall effect is delightful.
In other ways, though, a highlight here is the mandolin transcription of
“Summer” from The Four Seasons – this
music is so well-known that it may seem quixotic to perform it on an instrument
other than the violin, for which it was written. Yet here as in the
transcription of Op. 3, No. 6, Avital makes a convincing case for playing this
as a mandolin concerto, not because it is in any sense authentic but simply
because it works and manages to sound
so good in this alternative arrangement. The rest of the pieces on this disc
are also transcriptions: Concerto in D for lute, RV 93; the Largo movement from Concerto in C for
flautino, RV 443; and the Trio Sonata in C for violin and lute, RV 82 – with
Avital here joined by Mahan Esfahani on harpsichord, Ophira Zakai on lute and
Patrick Sepec on cello. At the end of the CD, as an unusual bonus, tenor Juan
Diego Flórez sings two 18th-century
Venetian Gondolier songs, with Avital here playing not his usual mandolin but
an 18th-century variant called the mandolin lombardo – and with support from Ivano Zanenghi on lute,
Daniele Bovo on cello, Lorenzo Feder on harpsichord and Fabio Tricomi on Baroque
guitar. The Venice Baroque Orchestra performers, who play on period instruments
or reproductions of them and are steeped in historically accurate performance
practices, complement Avital’s playing beautifully throughout this disc. The
result of all the virtuosity is a chance to hear Vivaldi from a new and
fascinating angle, and to understand the capabilities of the mandolin not only
in Vivaldi’s music but also within the Italian musical tradition in general.

That tradition also includes
first-rate performing, sometimes by the composers themselves and often by
others interpreting their music. The performance tradition has come down to the
present day largely unscathed, and has resulted in excellent handling of a
great deal of non-Italian music as well as that of Italy itself. One
particularly enjoyable recent example is the recording by a trio of first-rate
Italian performers, on Brilliant Classics, of the complete piano trios of
Johann Nepomuk Hummel, a composer long neglected because he straddles the
Classical and Romantic eras without fitting fully into either, and therefore
sounds “too derivative” of the earlier era and “not anticipatory enough” of the
later one. At least that is how the neglect of him and his music have long been
justified – but as more of his works become available, the prejudice against
him is showing itself as just that: unjustifiable bias. Hummel knew and
interacted with Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, and his performances as a piano
virtuoso helped pave the way for Chopin, Liszt and others, and he is scarcely
responsible for living in a time of transition. He wrote in just about every
musical form except the symphony, and that is one reason for his music’s
neglect: there are no symphonies to revive – as there are ones by, for example,
Ferdinand Ries and Louis Spohr. But Hummel’s chamber music is, or should be, a
fertile field for modern performers, including the trio of Alessandro Deljavan,
Daniela Cammarano and Luca Magariello. Hummel’s seven piano trios (not counting
a very early eighth, labeled as a sonata) date from about 1804 (the year Haydn
helped Hummel obtain a post with Prince Nikolaus Esterházy) to the early 1820s. The Deljavan/Cammarano/Magariello
recording offers them, intelligently, in order of opus number, which may not be
wholly accurate chronologically (the exact dates of composition are not
entirely certain) but gives a good general sense of Hummel’s musical
development in this form. The first four trios, with opus numbers 12 (in
E-flat), 22 (in F), 35 (in G) and 65 (also in G), beautifully balanced and
unending tuneful, are shorter and generally lighter than the later ones, the
earlier works’ lyricism well-controlled and their counterpoint (at which Hummel
was adept) frequently lively. The first three are very much in the spirit of
the 18th century, witty and well-mannered if perhaps, structurally,
a trifle on the conventional side. The most original of the four is Op. 65,
which has a comparatively substantial first movement and more formal and
harmonic adventurousness than the others. Yet none of these compares with the
three later trios. Op. 83 in E, the longest of the seven, has intensely lyrical
sections and is distinguished for the way it significantly expands sonata form.
Op. 93 in E-flat features a dramatic opening to the development of the first
movement and a very Mozartean finale. And Op. 96, also in E-flat, shows
considerable originality in the first movement’s design, includes a number of
unusual instrumental twists in its second-movement variations, and concludes
with a Rondo alla russa reflective
not only of Russia but also of Poland – two nations that Hummel visited as a
virtuoso. The easy camaraderie in the Deljavan/Cammarano/Magariello
performances and Hummel’s frequently sparkling writing for all three
instruments combine to make this recording of Hummel’s trios another piece of
evidence, if another is needed, that a great deal of fine music by this
unjustly neglected composer has been rediscovered – and more is surely to come.

February 19, 2015

Giving readers what they
expect in terms of character and plot can be a great way to build a fan base
and keep it satisfied. This is a staple of forms from detective fiction to
character-based comedy, and it certainly works in cartooning – comic strips
such as Sherman’s Lagoon rely on
readers’ knowledge of the basic setting and characterizations, with Jim Toomey using
that familiarity to produce theme-and-variations strips that may take some
getting used to for those who have not seen his work before but that are
instantly recognizable (and very funny) for those who have. The latest Sherman’s Lagoon collection, the 19th,
has an in-joke in its title and on its cover: you have to know that Sherman,
the dim-witted shark, often calls human beachgoers “lunch” because that is,
after all, what they are to a shark (this shark, anyway). Less happily, the
collection also has a typical element on the back cover: the strip shown there,
about multiple unlikely occurrences happening all at once, talks about someone
on the beach being “struck by lightening [sic]”
– Toomey is not always the world’s best speller, and apparently his editors did
not notice that he meant “lightning.” It is easy to forgive the occasional faux pas like this, though, because
Toomey has now honed and refined his characters to a point at which their
misadventures are always worth at least a chuckle and often a guffaw. In the
latest collection, perpetual schemer Hawthorne the hermit crab creates “Crab
Growth Formula” to help other denizens of Kapupu Lagoon bulk up – but it also
gives them crab claws and antennae. Sherman, Hawthorne and Fillmore (the
sort-of-intellectual sea turtle) are temporarily turned into humans by Kahuna
the Easter Island god statue (hey, you have to be there!) – so they can go to
the Super Bowl. Later, back in the lagoon and their usual forms, the three take
a ride in an undersea Volkswagen left there as part of an “art installation” on
the sea floor. Ernest, the eyeglasses-wearing fish who is the strip’s computer
whiz and hacker, reprograms a data-collecting robot so it can, among other
things, operate a blender for perpetually lazy polar bear Thornton during his
never-ending beach vacation. Later, Hawthorne accompanies Thornton to the North
Pole, where Thornton’s mom has arranged a marriage that of course does not come
about. Also here are Sherman and Hawthorne’s visit to Lake Nicaragua to see the
freshwater sharks and incidentally join an armed uprising, a visit to Kapupu by
a bluefin tuna that Hawthorne wants to sell as sushi, a touch of cloning,
Sherman’s interpretation of the term “flash mob,” and various other forms of
silliness that are amusing precisely because the characters and personalities
here have been formed and polished (well, maybe not exactly polished) in 18 previous collections.
Toomey’s undersea world takes some getting used to for those not yet familiar
with it, but those who, umm, take the plunge will soon find themselves, err,
sucked into a great deal of hilarity.

The use and reuse of
familiar characters is not, however, enough, in and of itself, to make a story
work. The limitations of the approach are apparent in Blue Balliett’s new novel,
Pieces and Players, which gathers
characters from several of her earlier books and sends them into an adventure reminiscent
of ones that Balliett has offered before. The plot involves the theft of 13 art
masterpieces – one of course being a Vermeer, recalling Balliett’s Chasing Vermeer – and the assembly of a
group of five preteens to figure out what has happened and recover the art. The
young sleuths include Calder, Petra and Tommy from The Wright 3 and The Calder
Game, Zoomy from The Danger Box,
and Early from Hold Fast. And there
is the requisite mysterious adult who may be playing a game of her own (Mrs. Sharpe):
she has not appeared before, but her type
is familiar from earlier books. Balliett reintroduces her young characters
clearly, so there is no need to have read the earlier books to understand who
is who – and in fact, readers of the earlier books may find the reintroductions
rather dull. But Balliett is clearly going for some sort of resonance here by
reusing existing characters from her books rather than creating new ones – and,
for that matter, reusing plot elements that she has explored before. The importance
of art comes through as clearly in Pieces
and Players as in other Balliett books, although the passages emphasizing
this may be a little heavy-handed for some readers; and the descriptions of
museums and settings in Chicago are nicely done, although, again, may not be to
the taste of those unfamiliar with or not particularly interested in details
about the city and its landmarks. The real flaw of this (+++) book, however, is
that much of its effect depends on the interaction of characters who are, in this
context, only mildly interesting and not always well differentiated. Because their
personalities were formed in other books, readers looking to read more about
them in a different-but-familiar mystery environment will have fun visiting
with them again and seeing how, again, they piece clues together to solve a
mystery that itself has many echoes of those in earlier Balliett books. Readers
new to Balliett’s work will, however, finds Pieces
and Players rather pale in plot and its characters something of an “in”
experience – not an “in joke,” since this is not character comedy, but more of
an “in mystery.”

There are several different
ways for authors to keep series books and their characters going and keep them
interesting to young readers – and, hopefully, to newly emerging readers who
will then seek out existing series entries. One method is through a book such
as Clark the Shark: Tooth Trouble.
This actually keeps two series going:
the one about toothy, well-meaning but easily intimidated and socially awkward
Clark, and the “I Can Read!” series for ages 4-8 – in which this is a Level 1
book featuring “simple sentences for eager new readers.” Many books in this
early-reading series are created by authors and illustrators other than the
originators of the characters featured – but in this case, Bruce Hale and Guy
Francis do the book themselves, and the result is pleasantly consistent with
other Clark the Shark books. Clark looks, talks and reacts here just as in the
books about him outside the “I Can Read!” series, and this low-key adventure
fits well with his others. The idea here is that Clark has a loose tooth and
needs to visit the dentist, but one of his friends warns him about all the
terrible things dentists do, so timid Clark becomes frightened and does not
want to go. Of course, when he does have his appointment, everything is fine,
and the dentist proves to be a very small fish who favors humor as a way to
relax patients. This works just fine for Clark: Doctor Pia “had the gentlest
fins and the silliest jokes.” Soon the loose tooth is out, Clark is back to his
usual very toothy smile, and everything ends happily – with Hale being good
enough to explain, on the last page, some things about real sharks (such as the
fact that “they never run out of” teeth and “some lose up to 30,000 teeth in
their lifetime!”). Hale’s usual pleasant plotting and Francis’ typically
amusing drawings help the underlying lesson here go down easily, all within a
series that gets new readers into the, umm, swim of things.

In other cases, a series for
young readers builds on itself by taking the same adventure, or series of
adventures, through not one or two but three or more books. Trilogies are
especially common, but sometimes authors push things beyond that and create
tetralogies. Dan Gutman goes even farther with The Genius Files, for which he has written a five-book series
(quintology?). The standard perils-of-Pauline plot, with the twin protagonists
(a boy named Coke and a girl named Pepsi, mercifully shortened to Pep much of
the time) subjected to torment after torment and mystery after mystery, has
worn rather thin by its finale, License
to Thrill. There is a sameness to the diabolical-traps-barely-escaped
narrative that even some of the target readers, ages 8-12, may find wearing by
now. Others, though, will revel in yet more escapades and more dangers and more
troubles to be overcome – and more parents so hopelessly clueless about what is
going on that they strain the already very modest credibility of parental
participation in all books of this type. The parents of Coke and Pep spend most
of their time in the books being beyond oblivious and all the way into
brain-dead, although at the very end they finally say, “We thought you were
just putting us on. …You know, the way teenagers do.” And this leads the twins
to recite, for readers who may have forgotten, all the things they endured on
the cross-country trip chronicled in these five books, during which they were
“almost frozen to death, boiled in oil, pushed into a sand pit…thrown into a
vat of Spam, kidnapped, blasted with loud music…swarmed by bats, abducted by aliens,
sprayed with poison gas, [and] had stuff dropped on our heads.” You get the
idea. So do the twins’ parents, very belatedly indeed. And it is clear from the
list of perils that Gutman knows one sure way to make a series as ridiculous as
this one work: humor. That is the best thing about The Genius Files, and there is certainly plenty of it in the
concluding volume, often couched in comments to the reader: “At this point,
you’re probably starting to feel a little angry that Coke hasn’t been thrown
into a volcano yet. I mean, I promised back in chapter 1 that Coke was going to
get thrown into a volcano. And here we are in chapter 11, and the twins are
nowhere near a volcano.” No worries,
though, for the author delivers what he promises, in his own time and his own
way. And he delivers it with frequent asides and nudges that make it clear he
knows exactly what he is doing: “I know what you’re thinking, dear reader.
You’re thinking that this story is totally
preposterous.” Well, yes. But in a series like this, that doesn’t really
matter. In fact, it is pretty much the point of the whole thing – a point that
Gutman, a prolific writer for this age group, clearly understands, and uses as
a building block to lengthen the series and eventually, with License to Thrill, bring it to a
conclusion that fans will find quite satisfyingly absurd.

Moody Bitches: The Truth about
the Drugs You’re Taking, the Sleep You’re Missing, the Sex You’re Not Having,
and What’s Really Making You Crazy. By Julie Holland, M.D. Penguin. $27.95.

From its deliberately
provocative main title through its over-extended and over-involved subtitle,
and thence through more than 400 pages of advice that lurches (sometimes
uneasily) from the witty to the with-it and back, Moody Bitches seeks to communicate, in essence, one single thought
(ellipsis in the original): “Loving your body, trusting its signals, and
inhabiting it fully… This is the way back to health.”

The rest of Moody Bitches is just exegesis, some of
it fervent, some of it entertaining, most of it plain-spoken, and all of it
drawing on New York City psychiatrist Julie Holland’s experience as a therapist
– delivered with the kind of slam-bang intensity on which New Yorkers pride
themselves. Beware of full immersion if you are someone for whom a little of
this style goes a long way.

Holland argues that women’s
moodiness, often considered a defect or problem, is in fact entirely natural
and a good thing, being a sign of women’s sensitivity and adaptability. Moods,
she says, are the body’s feedback system and can be managed in such a way as to
let women lead healthier lives. Therefore, the use of mood-altering
medications, which by design reduce mood swings even if they do not eliminate
them, is in general a bad thing, damping not only extremes of emotional
instability but also empathy, passion and sensitivity. Even in a bad situation,
says Holland, medicine can make matters worse – by making matters seem more
tolerable than a woman ought to deem them to be, and deflecting or undermining her
natural understanding of the need to change the circumstances.

To say that Holland is no
fan of medication is to understate her antipathy toward it. As a medical
doctor, she acknowledges, rather half-heartedly, its importance, but when it
comes to specific medicines that women take, she has little positive to say.
Birth-control pills, for example, are “destabilizing” for many women and “can
really cut into your sexual desire. I tell my patients this is the ‘dirty
little secret’ of the Pill. For some women, being liberated from the fear of
unwanted pregnancy may allow them to relax and experience sexual pleasure more,
but a slew of other women are unhappy to discover that their desire for sex and
their ability to achieve orgasm are muted by being on the Pill.”This is stylistically typical of Holland, as
she minimizes positive matters (“some” women “may” benefit) while emphasizing
negatives (a “slew” are “unhappy”).

To be sure, Holland’s
plain-spokenness is welcome, and there are flashes of humor in what is
essentially a humorless narrative here, such as a parenthetical remark in the
midst of her discussion of the Pill: “(FYI, when you’re perimenopausal, your
belly starts to store fat because your estrogen levels are waning. Beware the
menopot.)”Holland uses personal
experience as a teaching tool when she feels it will help: “I can’t get rid of
my menopot and it’s driving me crazy. …After two kids and waning hormones, I am
now the not-so-proud owner of a ‘muffin top.’”By and large, though, she attacks topics – and “attacks” is the right
word – with ravenous enthusiasm, either devouring them or (to mix metaphors) beating
them into submission. She calls food “a drug we can’t resist” and explains the
mismatch between our modern world, in which “high-calorie foods are abundant,”
and our genetic makeup: “our bodies were designed to hoard calories now for
hard times later” and “the dopamine circuitry would light up like a pinball
machine” at the sight of an available food source. In a chapter called “Your
Body: Love It or Leave It,” which is neither more nor less than a pro-exercise
argument, Holland includes subheads called “Brain Fertilizer,” “This Is Your
Brain on Obesity,” “Pretty Ugly” and “Love That Body: Hips, Boobs, and Pubes.”
All this is there just to urge women to move
more and understand that “the hips and thighs of swimsuit models and
celebrities are unattainable for the average woman on the average American
diet, without a personal trainer, personal chef, plastic surgeon, and, most crucial,
Photoshop.” Holland writes about “Inflammation, the Key to Everything” (yes,
that is the chapter title) in discussing stress, depression and emotional
resilience. But, as in many of her chapters, stripping away the cleverness and
flood of verbiage leads readers to some very familiar and not-always-helpful
places: “Don’t Stress about Stress and It Will All Be Okay,” says a subhead,
within which Holland urges, “Reappraise a stressor as a challenge, not a
threat, and see how you feel. …[F]ollow your joy to enhance resilience and
reduce stress.” Nothing new there – and no suggestions on how to “reappraise a stressor as a challenge.”

This is where Moody Bitches ultimately disappoints.
Pretty much everything Holland says, bar some fairly extreme positions
regarding modern life and medicine, is sensible, intelligent and often very
well put – reading her book is like listening to an especially well-educated
friend hold forth on a variety of topics germane to modern everyday living in
the developed world. But getting from what Holland correctly identifies as
women’s (and men’s!) stressed, overworked, exhausted, anxiety-ridden everyday
existence to a better, calmer, happier, drug-free, reduced-stress and far more
idyllic life is extremely difficult, and the way to do so is by no means clear.
Eat better, exercise more, sleep better, enjoy the delights of the everyday,
have good sex, feel less stress, and your life will be better. Yes, it will.
But how do you get to such a utopian
state from where you are now? There is little guidance on that to be found in
Holland’s book, which turns simplistic far too often in addressing the
difficult realities of getting from where you are to where you want to be:
“Accepting yourself, your natural
self, in all its splendor, is key to being happy and healthy.” Why, yes. And to
gain that acceptance, you – what? Become one of Holland’s psychiatric patients?
Hmmm…that’s a thought…

Turn loose a fine opera
conductor and a first-rate opera orchestra on symphonic repertoire and very
interesting things happen, as quickly becomes clear in the first three releases
from the new Philharmonia Records label of Philharmonia Zürich. Fabio Luisi, the Zürich Opera’s general music director,
brings operatic sensibilities not only to opera-related orchestral music but also
to dramatic music not tied to opera at all. For a two-CD set of Wagner preludes,
overtures and excerpts, Luisi treads a great deal of familiar territory plus
some that remains little-known – and except for a peculiar arrangement of the
material and one strikingly ill-considered omission, this is an outstanding
release. Luisi here shows his familiarity with and understanding of almost all
the 13 completed operas by Wagner, and it is quite striking to hear the ways in
which the very early Die Feen and Das Liebesverbot look ahead in some ways
to Wagner’s later work – and, in other ways, go in directions that the composer
decided not to follow. If there is a primary emphasis in Luisi’s
interpretations, it is grandeur: he looks for and finds it in Rienzi and Tannhäuser as well as in Die
Meistersinger and Siegfried’s Funeral
March, and he balances it with a fine sense of atmospheric tone painting –
very well performed by the orchestra – in the music from Lohengrin and Parsifal.
It is slightly odd to include the thrice-familiar Ride of the Valkyries without also offering the equally well-known
and upbeat Act III Prelude from Lohengrin,
but that is not the truly disturbing omission: the distressing one is the
decision not to offer the overture to Der
fliegende Holländer, Wagner’s fourth opera, despite including the openings
of his first three. Indeed, there is music here from 10 operas, and it is
understandable that there is none from Das
Rheingold or Siegfried, which are
notoriously difficult to excerpt. But no Der
fliegende Holländer? That is beyond strange in a set like this one. Also,
the arrangement of the music is apparently random – it would have made a great
deal more sense to present the material chronologically, but in fact Luisi
offers it in something closer to reverse chronology, with Parsifal starting the first disc and Die Feen concluding the second. If there is a rationale for all
this, it is far from apparent. What is
apparent, though, is that Luisi and Philharmonia Zürich are a marvelous team, the orchestra being highly responsive
to whatever the conductor calls for, and the conductor himself clearly being
steeped in the meaning as well as the orchestration of Wagner’s music,
resulting in performances that are clean, very well balanced, paced at just the
right speeds, and exciting in highly individual ways – from the intense to the
exalted. Yes, there could have been more music here – there is plenty of room
for it on the CDs; and yes, the arrangement could have been better thought-out.
But so much pleasure and so much understanding come through on this recording
that its positives far outweigh its negatives.

The same is emphatically
true for Luisi’s interpretation of Berlioz’ Symphonie
Fantastique. This is, in fact, an exceptionally operatic reading of one of
the most Romantic of all symphonies. Luisi overdoes the tempo changes – and
gets away with it every time, because he does so in a way that heightens the
drama and intensity of the music. He goes for really big climaxes and really
quiet soft passages – and, again, this works every time, accentuating the
extremes of passion delineated in the music and heightening the listener’s
experience of it. This symphony is episodic and even disconnected in many ways,
its idée fixe
notwithstanding, and Luisi makes no attempt to cover up its structural
irregularities – instead, he embraces them, turning the work into something
like an extended tone poem (it would be fascinating to hear him apply this
technique to Tchaikovsky’s Manfred
Symphony or Symphony No. 4). Here as in the Wagner release, Philharmonia Zürich plays simply beautifully, with
excellent sectional balance, piquant winds, and an overall sound that is
wonderfully robust. But also here as in the Wagner CDs, there are some oddities
about the release. Musically, the strangest part of it is the finale, in which
one would certainly expect Luisi to pull out all the stops and produce a
hectic, hyper-dramatic conclusion. Instead, he here offers a movement more
restrained than in many other performances, letting it build carefully and
avoiding the feeling it sometimes has of nearly spiraling out of control. This
is an effective way to handle the movement, but a rather strange one in light
of the presentation of the four that come before it. Also, in terms of
presentation rather than musical decisions, this CD contains only the symphony – and it is hard to
imagine, with so many fine versions of this work available accompanied by other
Berlioz music (frequently one or more of his wonderful overtures), why a
listener would gravitate to a disc, even a very well-played one, that contains
only the symphony and nothing else.

It would be natural to
expect the one actual opera among these new Philharmonia Records releases to be
the most successful presentation of all, but even though Luisi interprets
Verdi’s Rigoletto with passion and
close attentiveness to details of the music, and the orchestra plays very well
throughout, this DVD is a (+++) release – and scarcely a Rigoletto for the ages. The reasons are the staging and the
unevenness of the singing. The stage director is Tatjana Gürbaca, who, like so many
contemporary stage directors, insists on modernizing the opera, removing all
those old-fashioned palaces and costumes, and indeed stripping the production
of pretty much everything that might hold visual interest: the basic set throughout
is a very large table, covered with a white sheet and with black chairs all
around. The props of Rigoletto are
entirely gone: no ladder, for example, and no blindfold (the abductors use
pepper spray). Costumes are modern, and here is no way to understand, visually,
just what Rigoletto’s job is or where he lives or works, because these matters
have no connection with anything the audience sees. There is also no riverside
inn for the final act of this grim set piece. The dull, essentially unchanging
set forces a focus on the music, which would be a good thing if all the singers
were of top quality. But they are not. Saimir Pirgu is a Duke of Mantua with
little character, no visible acting skills, and no lyricism in his phrasing,
although his voice itself has a fine tone and good volume. Aleksandra Kurzak as
Gilda has problems with her high range, but her acting is good: for example,
she is initially excited at her abduction, even waving happily to the audience,
but then gradually realizes the mob’s intent may be darker than she realizes.
George Petean as Rigoletto and Andrea Mastroni as Sparafucile are all right,
but neither is intense enough to ignite the drama. The closest this production
comes to a bit of humor – which is admittedly in short supply in this opera –
is Julia Riley’s gum-chewing Giovanna, a small role that proves something of a
scene-stealer amid all the bleakness elsewhere. To be sure, this opera is bleak, and in fact the strongest
elements of this Rigoletto production
emphasize that: the chorus is positively eerie as it glides on and off stage,
sometimes wearing golden crowns, made of paper, that seem both out of place and
vaguely threatening. The overall sense of menace of Rigoletto comes through forcefully at times, imperfectly at others:
all the skill of Luisi and the orchestra cannot conceal the fact that the
visual aspect of this production is simply not very engaging – and, for that
matter, not very clear in indicating just who the players are and just what
sort of drama is being enacted. Luisi shows himself in all three new
Philharmonia Records releases to be a strong, committed conductor who can find
and pull out the drama and contrasts in operatic and non-operatic music alike.
But each release has some oddities or inadequacies that make this newly created
label seem a touch too self-indulgent.

There is a great deal of
very interesting music about, and much of it deserves to be better known; but
realistically, certain releases are likely to reach out only to people with
highly specialized tastes and interests. In fact, the providing of high-quality
musical performances to a relatively small niche audience is testimony to the
ability of companies to produce and market new releases that are either
sufficiently subsidized or sufficiently low-cost to turn a profit (or at least
break even) despite not likely being appealing to a mass audience. For example,
Dacapo, which specializes in music by Danish composers, consistently offers
high-quality SACD recordings of material that few people outside Denmark have
likely ever heard – and that is true even when a composer is as well-known
internationally as Carl Nielsen. Although Nielsen’s large-scale instrumental
music, in particular his six symphonies, is often recorded and fairly often
heard in concert, his vocal works – including his delightful opera Maskarade – are much less familiar
outside Scandinavia. So the new recording of 20 of his songs, written between
1895 and 1926, is a welcome addition to the Nielsen discography – but is not
likely to have widespread appeal. Although the choir members of Ars Nova
Copenhagen sing the songs very well under Michael Bojesen’s direction, these
short Danish-language pieces have less musical originality and less inherent
interest for non-Danes than other music by Nielsen. Certainly, much of this is
by design: the composer used and arranged many Danish folk tunes, and saw these
songs as his attempt to preserve and revive the Danish song tradition. In that,
they were successful: community singers in Denmark today continue to perform
many of these works, which in general have pleasant melodies and are simply
harmonized and written well within amateur or semi-professional vocal ranges.
To those not fully immersed in Danish traditions, the music is rather bland,
and the words – typical in folk songs from many nations – are of no major
consequence. Therefore, although the disc is quite well performed and the sound
is very good, this remains a specialty item for those focused on Danish music
or on Nielsen’s works in particular.

Somewhat similarly, a new
Steinway & Sons release featuring pianist Lara Downes is targeted only at
people immersed in the legend and music of Billie Holiday. Downes brings a classical
performer’s technique to 20 arrangements of Holiday songs by Jed Distler, one
by Teddy Wilson and one by Marian McPartland. The arrangements are all quite
well done, and the music will be highly enjoyable for Holiday fans interested
in hearing it without vocals: standards such as God Bless the Child and Strange
Fruit are here, along with less-known songs whose melodies frequently sound
somehow familiar. Distler’s arrangements sound now like ragtime, now like film
music, now like gospel, even sometimes like classical piano works; and he tries
to bring inflections to the piano music akin to those that Holiday used when
she sang. Whether or not he succeeds will not be apparent to anyone except diehard
Holiday fans. What many listeners will notice, though, is that the songs
collectively, in the order in which they appear, seem almost to trace Holiday’s
life, although they are not arranged chronologically. Clearly the arrangers and
Downes wanted a disc that would communicate about Holiday in ways that go
beyond simply offering piano versions of some songs she made famous. Again,
whether they succeed at this will depend on how well listeners know Holiday’s
biography and how strongly interested they are in the singer as well as the
music. Yes, Downes plays well, and yes, the arrangements of songs Holiday made
famous are well done; but just as the Nielsen choral works have a certain
sameness about them and seem in large part like pieces for a niche audience, so
do the Holiday pieces heard here seem to reach out in only a very limited way.

Sometimes the “niche-ness”
of a recording is caused simply by the potential audience’s lack of familiarity
with the music or the composer. Lee Actor (born 1952) writes modern classical
works of considerable verve and style, with particularly compelling
orchestration and more attention to audience involvement in the music than is
evident in the works of many other contemporary composers. The three Actor
pieces on a new Navona CD are all appealing. His Piano Concerto uses the solo
instrument very differently from the way it is used on the Billie Holiday
tribute CD: Actor creates a work with considerable sweep, from the piano’s
first cadenza-like entrance through an extended first movement, shorter Adagio and a finale aptly labeled Allegro feroce. Structured in
traditional classical-concerto form, the work features particularly attractive
orchestration and a number of pianistic challenges – with which Daniel Glover
copes admirably. As a whole, the concerto is a workout for both the soloist and
the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra under Kirk Trevor – but it does not feel
like a stretch for a listener’s ears, despite its clever rhythmic changes and
frequent emotional ups and downs. Somewhat similarly, Actor’s Third Symphony
appears challenging to play but much less so to hear: its five-movement form is
close to that of a traditional symphony, and the composer’s attention to
instrumentation and rhythmic detail keeps the work propulsive and involving.
Its two short scherzos (the second and fourth movements) are admirably
contrasted and offer some Shostakovich-like drive and a certain level of
ferocity not unlike that in the finale of the Piano Concerto. On the lighter side
of things, Divertimento for Small
Orchestra is a pleasant look-back of a piece whose rhythms and harmonies
are distinctly modern but whose overall feel remains planted in the 18th
century. There is nothing especially profound in any of these works, but there
is a great deal that is thoughtful, and all the music is well-crafted and put
together by a composer who writes well for all sections of the orchestra. Yet
he is not an especially well-known figure, and for that reason, this CD will
appeal mainly to listeners already familiar with his music and to those to whom
it is carried by word of mouth (or word of ear).

Along the same lines, the
chamber works of Pamela J. Marshall (born 1954) on a new Ravello CD are
certainly well-written, but here the lack of familiarity with the composer is
only one issue. Another is the attempt to portray various nature scenes through
this music – an effort that leads to some earnestness but also to some
predictable instrumentation and some sounds that come across more as background
music than as material worthy of focused listening. Through the Mist for flute (Danielle Boudrot), violin (Elizabeth
Whitfield) and harp (Barbara Poeschl-Edrich) is supposed to evoke scenes
ranging from morning fog to sunset, but sounds only like countless other
would-be evocative pieces. Communing with
Birds for solo flute (Susan Jackson) offers sounds as expected as those
used for water in Waves and Fountains
for oboe (Jennifer Slowik), horn (Kevin Owen) and piano (Karolina Rojahn). Zoa for two flutes (both played by Peter
H. Bloom) and harp (Mary Jane Rupert) is supposed to sound otherworldly but
basically seems evanescent in expectable ways. Dance of the Hoodoos for oboe (Audrey Markowitz), violin
(Whitfield), cello (Jane Sheena) and piano (Paul Carlson) is more attractive,
its syncopations and mysticism (based on scenes at Yellowstone National Park)
seeming less self-conscious in its two movements than the techniques in other
works here. And Examinate Variations
for flute (Ashley Addington) and cello (Rachel Barringer) seems like Marshall’s
version of a Baroque suite, its seven short movements including some
thematically and rhythmically attractive moments despite the limitations of the
scoring. These last two works are the highlights of a disc that otherwise
offers music whose nature evocations are certainly heartfelt but musically
nothing special or revelatory. Those who know Marshall’s music will enjoy the
CD, but it is hard to see it reaching out in any significant way to those not
already familiar with the composer.